All the Memory in the World

(72 mins, 2013)

Memories, mirrors, madness and Memento collide in this experimental video essay focusing on the photographs and photographers in thousands of narrative films. All the Memory in the World is a stream-of-consciousness meditation on cinema, photography, identity, memory and dreams narrated by an insomniac who obsesses over images.

Awards: Best Experimental Feature, Big Muddy Film Festival.

“Lines of reality are further blurred when the narrator repeats dialogue from movies, mimicking the actors onscreen, who are often female. Photos are ripped and taped back together, mirrors crushed. The movie begins anew multiple times, the narrator asking the audience to start again from the beginning. But where was the beginning? The camera's lens zooms in, pulls back, hiding, obscuring, bleeding into one scene from another.” —Justin McIntosh, 'Columbus Alive

Playing Alive

(15:57, 2007)

Playing Alive reassembles the entire career of John Travolta to create a new and unexpected portrait of the Hollywood actor. The video turns appropriated imagery from over forty of Travolta’s films into an existential meditation focusing on his numerous onscreen death scenes and the dichotomies of mind and body, real and fake, and alive and dead. It transforms dialogue from his films into an interior monologue about his dissatisfaction with Hollywood and his place in it while simultaneously positioning his acting career in the context of Scientology, the religion he follows off screen.

"...a metaphysical review of John Travolta's career that is unlike any film-star tribute you'll ever see."- Douglas Perry, The Oregonian

Rabid

(10:33, 2005)

Rabid is a chronological collection of onscreen kisses of Kirsten Dunst from 1990 (Kim Cattrall) to 2004 (Paul Bettany). At first the little girl she plays Bonfire of the Vanities is reluctant to kiss her mother. However, her next kiss, from Brad Pitt in Interview with a Vampire, awakens her characters to a trajectory of sexual aggression, with stops at Bring It On, Spider-Man, and Wimbledon.

Awards: Audience Award, Cinematexas

Heston of the Apes

(15:30, 2000)

Heston of the Apes examines the vocal performance of Charlton Heston in the sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes by editing the film down to only the moments when he speaks. It was edited on a linear system, from VHS tape to VHS tape.

"Now that's moviemaking." - Amanda Congdon, Rocketboom.

Psycho 2000

(109 mins, 2000, remastered in 16x9 in 2004)

Psycho 2000 was one of the first videos to explore both film versions of Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 original and Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake). Using a VHS video switcher, both films were played simultaneously and recorded superimposed on top of each other, revealing that the remake, purportedly shot-for-shot, is not what it claims to be, and the two films are almost never in sync. The viewer's mind is constantly torn between moments that have both already happened and are about to happen, but not necessarily in the way they are remembered. And Mother has the last word.

"...much more startling than Soderbergh's Psychos, precisely because it doesn't give us a paint-by-numbers demonstration of the scene. It invites a perplexed viewing experience and offers up the viewer's mind and visual senses to be challenged." - Nelson Carvajal

B R E A T H L E S S

(4:57, 2000)

A re-edit of Jean-Luc Godard's film Breathless focusing on the frames of the film that contain subtitles. The video runs at an even more frantic pace than the original, dialogue is condensed into a sonic collage and the images flicker by. It was edited on a linear system, from VHS tape to VHS tape.

2001 for 2001

(9:39, 2000)

In the early 2000s I was fascinated by how DVD technology could change how movies were experienced. Drawing parallels to the technological advances made possible by the Monolith in the film, I made 2001 for 2001 by fast-forwarding through the entire DVD of 2001: A Space Odyssey and recording this new, almost stop-motion and now seemingly slow-motion, experience.

Invasion of the Living Dead

(96 min, 1999)

Invasion of the Living Dead mashes up two classic sci-fi films by playing 1/2 of each film simultaneously on the same screen. On the left side of the screen is Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956) and on the right side of the screen is Night of the Living Dead (George Romero, 1968). The VHS tape of this work has been long lost, and some 4x5 b&w photographs are the only documentation of it. The video was made by playing both videos simultaneously through an analogue switcher and recording the processed signal.